Judge Michael Baxley has denied one of the state's motions to amend his order finding the prison system violated the rights of mentally ill inmates / MYKAL McELDOWNEY / Staff

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Columbia bureau

COLUMBIA — A circuit judge who ruled in January that mentally ill inmates have died in state prisons for lack of mental health care is refusing to toss out his 45-page order, explaining to lawyers that his strong language in the ruling was the result of the prison system’s attitude throughout the litigation.

Circuit Judge Michael Baxley, who said he will soon leave the bench, held a hearing Friday to consider motions by the prison system’s lawyers to alter or amend his ruling, in which he found the prison system had violated the rights of inmates with serious mental illness.

At the end of the hearing, Baxley invited Bryan Stirling, the director of the prison system who sat through the hearing, to address the court.

Stirling ended the hearing on a positive note, telling the judge after he had finished with his rulings that both sides have entered mediation.

“My goal in mediation is that it is going to be a productive process for both sides,” he said. “So far I’ve found that to be true.”

Dan Westbrook, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the case, agreed with Stirling’s positive outlook.

“I agree with him that I think that the meetings thus far have been positive,” he said. “I would also say that it is too early to tell. The fact that we are meeting and we have other meetings scheduled is good.”

Stirling said the agency would examine Baxley’s written order and he believes it will then appeal the matter.

Andrew Lindemann, a lawyer representing the prisons, argued a host of reasons why the case should be dismissed or amended, including that the plaintiffs lack proper standing, that the prisons can’t be sued because of the principal of separation of powers and that judicial policy in the state forbids judges from micromanaging state agencies.

“The evidence in this case, and I stated it clearly in the order, is that people are dying at the Department of Corrections because they have a lack of basic mental health care,” Baxley told Lindemann, who said the state didn’t agree.

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Lindemann also argued that the order lacked legal citations.

“What would you have the court do, sir?” Baxley asked the lawyer at one point. “Would you have the court simply walk away and leave it like it is?”

Lindeman replied that he believes the Department of Corrections has strong defenses in the case.

“With all due respect to your honor, we disagree with your decision, we disagree with the vast majority of factual findings, we disagree with the court’s methodology,” he said.

Lindemann argued that the state Supreme Court has advised judges to have a “hands-off” approach to the operation of agencies.

“With all due respect to your honor, what we have in this case is a management review of the entire mental health system at the South Carolina Department of Corrections,” he said.

He also argued that Baxley didn’t mention anything beneficial at the agency in his order, noting that the prison system’s suicide rate was one of the lowest in the country over a nine-year period.

Baxley replied that the order wasn’t the venue to praise the “hard-working folks at the Department of Corrections,” many of whom he said do the “best they can.”

“This order, sir, respectfully, had to be straightforward and it had to be blunt because of what this court has observed to be the completely recalcitrant position of the department regarding this litigation from day one, which was a constant fight and struggle over every issue, from the big issues to the tiny issues and minutiae of discovery.”

Baxley told Lindemann that his order was hard, direct and encompassing because of the agency’s continued opposition to every phase of the lawsuit.

“If the department had come in here with a more cooperative attitude” and was willing to go with the plaintiffs to lawmakers and talk about the problems that existed at the agency, things might have been different, he said. “But that was not the position. The position of the department (to the plaintiffs) was, ‘You can’t make us do this.’”

Baxley found that the plaintiffs in the case, the Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, and an inmate with the initials T.R., the last inmate still imprisoned from the original class in the 2005 lawsuit, had standing to bring the case. He also ruled that while it was unnecessary to make a ruling that the case met the public importance exception to standing, he found that the case meets that exception.

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The judge explained that while he dismissed the General Assembly from the case early in the litigation because of separation of powers, that doesn’t mean he has to also dismiss the prison system because it is part of the executive branch.

He also rejected arguments that while judicial restraint is an accepted policy, that prevents the court from ordering the prison system to propose a plan to address problems with the handling of mentally ill inmates. He repeated his view expressed in his order that judges have “inherent” authority to took into the care of prisoners because they are the ones who send inmates behind bars.

“The court saw a very troubling situation and attempted to remedy it,” he said. “That is the court’s role.”

The prison system announced on the day of the ruling that it would appeal. It subsequently released a list of actions it had taken or was taking to improve its treatment of mentally ill inmates.

Westbrook argued that many of the issues raised by the state on Friday had already been addressed by Baxley, either during the trial or in rulings before the trial. Lindemann argued that while the judge made some rulings on the issues, they weren’t final, written orders.